Re: <nettime> Weekly Standard: Shirkyism

[David Mandl <dmandl@panix.com>]

Good to see a smart person calling Shirky out. Criticism of him (actually a ridiculously easy target) is virtually non-existent in the U.S., presumably because it makes people look like dinosaurs who "don't get it." (See the extreme overreaction to Malcolm Gladwell's recent article about Shirky and Twitter. Gladwell's no Walter Benjamin either, but the response to his criticism was absolutely hysterical, as in "hysteria.")

Nettimers may be particular amused by an interview with Shirky published in the New York Observer a few months ago, in which he made these bizarre statements:

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He said he has always been a Web optimist; until recently, he added, this was like being a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. The opposition showed up, but it was mostly an exhibition game. "They weren't really theorists," said Mr. Shirky. "The entire argument was really between people who loved the Internet and people who didn't understand it."

http://www.observer.com/2010/media/feats-clay?page=1

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This comparison of his "opposition" to the hapless, five-foot-four doofuses who regularly get humiliated by the Globetrotters was one of the wildest displays of megalomania (or ignorance) I'd seen in a very long time.

   --Dave.

--
Dave Mandl
dmandl@panix.com
davem@wfmu.org
Web: http://www.wfmu.org/~davem
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dmandl




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